A Patriotic Summer Cake

As Carlo's Bake Shop has become more and more popular over the years, we developed a great need for cakes that could be easily replicated by anybody who worked in the shop, even our newbies. This cake was developed with that in mind: a spirited but uncomplicated bit of design that adds up to more than the sum of its parts. The colors and shapes do all the work here, but that hasn't stopped this cake from being popular when Independence Day rolls around every year.

Ingredients

For the edibles:

Two 9-inch cakes, filled with your choice of filling

5 cups white Decorator's Buttercream (page 154) in a pastry bag

fitted with the #7 interchangeable tip

3 pounds white fondant

8 ounces blue fondant

4 ounces red fondant

For the tools and equipment:

9-inch cardboard circle

Pizza cutter

Strip cutter

Kitchen scissors

Steamer

Star cutters, various sizes

Water pen or pastry brush

Cooking Directions

Prepare the cake: On a turntable, prepare a double-layer cake on a doilylined cardboard circle, fill it with the filling of your choice, and dirty-ice it without the tip (see page 197). (Note: After dirty-icing, keep the buttercream in the bag for affixing design elements to the cake and creating the shell border.)

Cover the cake with fondant: Drape the cake with white fondant, smooth it in place with the smoother, and trim it. Do not return the unused fondant to the tub; you will need it to make stars.

Make a blue fondant top for the cake: Roll out 8 ounces of blue fondant to a 10-inch square. Lay a 9-inch cardboard circle over the dough and cut around it with a pizza cutter to make a circle. Return any unused fondant to

its storage container.

Apply the top to the cake: Pipe buttercream onto the top of the cake in concentric circles and spread it out smoothly and evenly with a cake icing spatula. !e layer should be thin but completely cover the top of the cake; this will allow you some flexibility when you apply the top. Carefully slide the cardboard circle under the blue fondant circle and use it to transfer the circle to the top of the cake, sliding it off the circle.

Make red flag stripes: Roll red fondant out to a rectangle about 5 inches wide, 15 inches long, and ?? inch thick. Set a strip cutter to 1?? inches and cut 12 strips from the fondant.

Apply the stripes to the side of the cake: Steam the cake. Working quickly with one strip at a time, let it hang down from the top edge of the cake, and cut off the excess at the bottom with scissors. Press the strip onto the moist cake and repeat with the remaining strips, arranging them 1?? inches apart. Steam the cake again to fix the stripes to the cake and dissipate any lingering cornstarch.

Make the stars: Roll out 2 ounces of white fondant. Use a variety of sizes of star cutters to cut stars. (If you do not have a set of star cutters, you can cut freestyle with a sharp, thin-bladed knife such as a paring knife, but star

cutters will make the job much easier.) Apply the stars to the top of the cake with a water pen or brush. Steam the cake again to fix the stars onto the cake. Pipe a border around the base: Rotate the turntable and pulse the white

decorator's buttercream bag to pipe a shell border along the bottom of the cake.